Perfused

Album Review

During the several years that passed without a single Fluxion release, Konstantinos Soublis was nonetheless privately prolific, evident from a sudden burst of releases across 2009-2010. Following a 12” and album on Resopal, and a 12” for Echocord, Perfused — also released on Echocord, featuring both sides of “Inductance”/”Elation” — is the fifth Fluxion album overall. Through 2001, Soublis continually refined and pared down his sound, but the tracks here are among his most varied and vibrant to date, fueled by a newfound buoyancy and a reduction of shadowy textures. And yet, what Soublis produces here unquestionably remains dub techno — a decidedly less monochromatic and downright colorful strain when compared to that of their Basic Channel/Chain Reaction forebears. “Elation” and “Fluctuations,” two of the album’s most dynamic tracks, dispense with austerity altogether and are filled with glinting details; the latter, with its bounding four-note bassline and swarming FX, seemingly whisks Maurizio’s M series from its abandoned warehouse habitat and drops it in the middle of a sun-baked meadow. Dub techno, even at is most evocative, has never been known for gorgeousness, but Soublis shrewdly does what he can to change that perception here.